The masterpiece of the year makes it into the UK media, while more fine details – and, of course, rumours - come to light…

The huge fractal spiral which appeared at Milk Hill last week was awarded a full page to itself today in two newspapers, one being the national ‘Daily Mail’ and the other being the London edition of its freebie sister-publication ‘Metro’, distributed in commuter cities.

Both titles approach the story with – for national newspapers – a reasonable amount of respect and openness, despite the Mail inevitably going out of its way to mention Doug and Dave! This report features photos (uncredited) from Steve Alexander and quotes from Karen Douglas and a helicopter company spokesman. It also includes the quote featured in our first Headline report on this formation, in which planker John Lundberg expresses incredulity at what would be needed for people to make it and the unlikelihood of this possibility (but see further below). Metro, meanwhile, features photos from Andrew King and a slightly shorter piece, but does also include a miniature photo on the front cover – so a lot of people will have been exposed to the phenomenon today, and their interest tweaked just a little, despite themselves, by such a beautiful image.

BBC 1 television featured the formation briefly on their national news bulletins today. BBC Radio 2 also apparently featured the formation at the weekend, and local ITV channel HTV covered the story too. A 30 minute HTV documentary on the whole phenomenon is due to be shown in September, incidentally – be warned, hoaxing is likely to feature prominently.

The same UK film company which had the fake solar system design made at Alton Barnes (see other Headline) took advantage of the appearance of the new fractal to film a love scene in it for their new movie, which appears to be called ‘A Place to Stay’, and commandeered the centre of the formation throughout most of Friday 17th August, incurring mostly curiosity, but some wrath, from visiting croppies.

In contrast to the dignified humility and reverence Lundberg publicly appears to show, however, some of the lower-grade plankers have inevitably begun to spread the expected poison about the formation, the latest rumour being that “12 people” made it in one night. Another well-known planker has boasted that he could have made it in “six hours”. The biggest rumour of all – unsubstantiated – is that the formation was made for the aforementioned HTV programme as a massive final effort to debunk, with Lundberg’s ‘Team Satan’ outfit actually onboard. If this were true, quite why Lundberg would have issued such public positive statements is called into question – to confuse, building others up to praise the formation before knocking them down?

For now, most people remain blown away by the beauty and sophistication of the design, which is, incidentally, a definitive 780’ in length, as measured by researcher Charles Mallett – not some of the more outlandish approximations we have heard (both newspapers today have it wrong). It is, whatever, one of the largest diameter (if not in length) crop glyphs ever found, and is made up from 409 separate circles...